Unity, Flash & 3D on the web

These are exciting times. Today, at the Flash Gaming Summit in San Francisco (of which we’re proud Gold Sponsors), Adobe has announced the public availability of a beta version of the Flash Player, codenamed Molehill, that has a very interesting new feature: hardware accelerated 3D support.

Molehill exposes a very low-level shader-based interface to the graphics hardware. Adobe has decided to focus on that low-level part, and do that really well. The molehill pre-release will not be shipping with a 3D engine, scene building tools, model and animation importers / exporters, physics, lighting or lightmap creation tools, etc.

Hmmm….does that list sound familiar? It sounds a lot like what you all love Unity for!

In the past few months, our engineers have been investigating the possibility of adding a Flash Player exporting option to Unity. That investigation has gone very well, and we’re moving into full production.

For Unity users, this no doubt spurs a lot of questions. Questions such as:

Will Unity on Flash support the full Unity feature set?

When will it be ready?

Okay, when will a beta be ready?

What will it cost?

Will it do A, B or C?

These, and many other questions, we cannot answer just yet. We can say that it will be as good as we can make it and we’ll do it as fast as we can do it.

We do however have some concrete answers for you now that shouldn’t wait…

Q. Is this the end of the Unity’s own Web Player?

Absolutely not. The Flash and Unity Web Players both have their strengths. We’re excited by the opportunity to target the Flash Player and all of its features with Unity, but there will be plenty of experiences that the Unity plugin is better suited for. It will be up to developers in the end, to decide whether they want to target only the Flash Player, only the Unity Web Player, or some combination of the two (now things are getting interesting!)

I’ve been browsing on-line more than three hours nowadays, but I never found any attention-grabbing article like yours. It is pretty price enough for me. Personally, if all website owners and bloggers made excellent content as you probably did, the net might be much more useful than ever before.

This is going to be a huge Boone. Flashes only real advantage from a web point of view is browser saturation.it’s the ONLY reason I’m not allowed to use unity for all the work we do at the university of north Texas. When you get this out, the entire distributed learning division will move the unity3d route. A free development tool with flash export, and the only package I actually enjoy using anymore.

Fantastic news, the amount of times potential clients have asked, Can this be done as flash rather than installing another plugin has been about %100 so, with this potential new feature in Unity, I am likely have leads that turn into jobs for interactive 3D presentations.

WOW! Great move! I think this will be the definitive feature to convince some companies to start developing in Unity (like mine). Having to download a plugin to be able to view games on the web can sometimes be a problem in particular cases, this will solve that disadvantage in my oppinion. I’m a flash developer but use Unity as a hobby. So this is AWESOME NEWS for me! :)

@Tony: I think you are mistaken in this. I work with Flash daily and the prospect of using a visual tool like Unity to create Flash content is really intriguing not only for me but for the entire development department here at work. It is a designer’s dream compared to what is offered by Away3D and even Alternativa/Flare.

Also, the Unity guys have stated support for writing in AS3 so I don’t think it has to be lots of “code translations”.

This is just unbelievable news. We are hitting a point in our development roadmap where we had to make a decision between Unity OR Flash Player for 3D delivery. You can imagine what this announcement did for our morale – fantastic! The very thought of being able to access the Unity API directly from FlashBuilder is almost too good to think about right now… Thanks so much for being forward-looking, and for taking a fresh look at what the Adobe guys are doing with Flash NOW rather than just writing it off completely like so many are doing because of its past shortcomings.

As an e-learning developer working within the US Government/Department of Defense arena, this is going to be a HUGE game-changer in terms of bringing immersive training simulations, virtual training and augmented reality applications into the Gov/DoD e-learning space. Security and Mobile Code restrictions have prevented many promising technologies from being widely used due to the proprietary nature of their web players, including Unity. One of the few browser-based player technologies approved across the DoD IT enterprise is the Flash and Shockwave Players. I don’t think anyone will argue that Director/Shockwave is a legacy technology that we are all just waiting for Adobe to slam the casket lid closed, but with the abilities that such a low level GPU supported 3D API brings to the browser-based 3D space, this is going to solve an enormous amount of technical issues that developers in this very restrictive IT environment have been struggling with for some time. Personally, I can’t wait to get my hands on it, think there are some very exciting times ahead for those of us in the Instructional Technology field supporting Government/Military customers, and am very thankful and constantly amazed at how much Unity Technologies has impacted both its own and parallel industries with thier continued innovations. Those complaining about Unity not having this or that has an extremely myopic and narrow view of what impact these type of advancements truly have. They need to cuddle up with their proprietary engine/technology of choice and shut up, allowing the rest of us to get to work and wring this technology out for all its worth.

Please provide the export to Flash Player for free like the export to the Unity Player is. –Cool would be an option (via scripting) to use the Flash Player automatically if the Unity Player is not installed.

Hahaa this is amazing!
Unity Team, you guys are awsome! Who would expect that? When everyone was thinking Unity and Adobe ware like rivals, you guys make this move. Nice move by the way!
Cant wait for that, now i think I’m going to purchase a Pro license! =)

Yes, this could solve the hottest Unity problem – a low browser penetration.

Even if Flash 3-D performance wouldn’t be so great as the ‘native’ Unity’s – this way the Unity game could be ‘introduced’ to much broader audience before the user decides to install the Unity web player.

I already imagine a web page template that looks for the Unity player as default and has a Flash fallback option. ^_^

btw I feel that Adobe isn’t very happy about it :) But what could they do or say? They had the same problem with Apple (which refused to host their Flash player) and had to do their own ‘conversion’ from Flash to iOS native code. So, from this standpoint, Unity’s export to Flash is perfectly ‘moral’. :)

Fantastic news, so hopefully we can now do augmented reality stuff native to one browser plug-in, bitmap to texture 2d, possibly stream live gameplay using peer to peer rtmfp protocol or live video texture2d chat? That unhinges so many doors? But raises so many questions, how are you going to safe guard the unity-flash api there are so many flash decompilers? Would you really want the full feature set to be openly released to flash users? I was still kind of hoping you’d be upgrading your own native web-player with webcam and microphone access eventually though?

We need to see ActionScript as a language to code content within Unity3D.

The flash player is widely installed and is old, where as the molehill language is new and fresh.
Unity 3D language is powerful and the multi export rocks, where as the player is new and is not widely installed.

How amazing that would just be if Adobe purchases/merges with Unity3D. Like it did with the giant Macromedia.

This is awesome news. I build 3D websites with unity and the biggest problem is the mandatory webplayer download. With this I can present the 3D version of the website to almost every visitor without having to prompt them first. You totally made my day. I mean week. I mean month. uhm… ok… you get the point.

i should open my big mouth now! it’s a great option for developers selling advergames like us. a few points
@crazy UT staff!
are you rewriting the whole engine in AS? if yes doesn’t it slow down the development of future versions? having multiple code bases is a true evil. however you are much smarter than me and know what you are doing. when i first saw that silverlight 5 will support 3d and GPU acceleration i told myself that you can port unity there because they are working with many companies to integrate silverlight everywhere but you are right, in web they are not as dominated as flash so it’s a better move. who knows maybe silverlight is another thing you are working on.
@commenters
the comment board is going to become stupid. it’s like children are commenting here. i think most people with those requests are not real game developers. “unity don’t have this, unity don’t have that” Do you love unreal features so why here? just go and download UDK. UT guys know what they don’t have. to help them set priorities you can go to feedback and vote for ideas.
surely there are features that we don’t have here but it’s true about all engines isn’t it? unity’s visual fidelity is not as much as unreal because of the lack of good shader knowledge in developers (us) and lack of good material editor in unity, HDR rendering is not available too but what do you think? doesn’t aras know that? search about it in forums and you can see his comments about it. unity is moving much faster than unreal and cryengine in terms of adding features. i think with the commercial success of unity 3 soon they will become a bigger team. after these ports (360,PS3,…) end, they will add features with more developers. hopefully they will have more money using union and asset store and it will help them too. i think they can add another service for publishing user’s android/iphone games and getting royaltees instead of selling licenses for those of us who are interested. first we make something using unity and show it to UT developers and then if accepted we will port it and they will publish it and get some of our revenue.

that news are wonderfull. Cant wait to explore this feature in common releases of Browsers, flash plugins. I think it is a really clever strategic move, to let the decision by the developer, wich format he want to export. Nice…!!!

This is incredibly exciting! With access to graphics hardware through the FLASH player even more people will now be able to enjoy the benefits of Unity. In addition to this, Unity will now gain even more exposure to the vast number of FLASH developers out there. I’m looking forward to seeing the types of content targeted towards the FLASH platform through Unity. Any word what Adobe is saying about this? Clearly, there are huge benefits for Adobe here as well. Who knows, perhaps Adobe will be so kind as to embed the Unity player within their FLASH plug-in? – I also think this is very good news as far as LMS systems are concerned because users do not have to download the Unity plug-in and it is very easy to communicate with LMS through FLASH anyway.

Imagine having the power of the Unity engine at your fingertips in Flash Builder. This is not only big news for online gaming, but has the potential to rock the world of Business Intelligence software too. Complex data visualisation, augmented reality, 3d navigation software…

Watch competitors scrambling to catch up a couple of months after this goes life!

…and LOL at the hilarious little Steve Jobs wannabees that think that Flash is something that needs to be ‘killed’ whahahaa!!

Unity does not have this Unity does not have that…
I think Unity Cru (Qualified Engineers) know exactly what they have and they do not have,
Don’t think they need to be reminded everytime they are exiting news around.

I have tried to install Unreal UDK, and could not run the engine: “run out of Video memory exiting application”. What do I do by another computer?
Let us not forget about the WebPlayer which Unique!!
Something else how much do a license cost for Cry/Vision engine
I have check their website I cannot see anything, and when you do not see anything you already know what it means $$$$$$$$.

Using the free Edition of Unity3 I have designed this small Application:http://www.shiefton.com/GAME/WebPlayer.html
which I have sold to a compagny for Children in Need.
Unfortunatly they have crappy computers with integrated graphic card.
The game work very well for them and they are very happy with the work.
Unity target Old and Hopeless Graphic cards and does that very well.
Which other Engine does that? I think they have a long way to go…

But yes I agree, there is a long way to go if we compare Unity3D to the other engine (which I truly do not care about)
but we have to admit that The Cru is Working very hard and as they have done in the past, I am 100% Confident that all our wishes will come true one day.

@George Dunning
Unity tech is a small company (100 employees) and less than 8 yrs old. However Unity is growing at quite an exponential rate. Every new release spots many AAA features while still pegged at a price which is many times lower than most other engines offer. Besides, can you even start think about all those features that unity spots that other expensive AAA packages do not have? Try developing an Android game with UDK or Cry. Unity gives it’s users the ability to add all these features to the main editor via scripting and make them available in the asset store. So what was that you’re saying again?

“- Unity has no Kismet.
– Unity had no Visual Scripting/Logic editor.”
Same thing. There are 3-5 solutions for that, all unnecessary, but sure, an official version would be cool.

“- Unity has no Material editor,with which you can craft beautiful materials.”
There are 2 full node based shader editors now. One even free

“- Unity does not have an advanced PhysX editor for physics simulation.”
why does it need a custom physics editor? Gameobject and components ARE the editor and you can edit IN game. All the custom physics editors I’ve used are far clumsier.

“- Unity does not have water that dynamically moves/makes waves when a character runs into it or a rigid body falls into it.”
That’s not the job of the engine. That’s like saying photoshop needs better water textures.
“- Unity does not have particle attractors.”
The particle system could do with some extra stuff I agree

“- Unity does not have the advanced NavMesh AI system like in AAA game engines.”
Again, not the job of the engine. Plus look up Aron’s pathfinding. It does everything you could want
“- Unity does not have material instancing,for performance optimization.”
That would be cool
“- Unity does not have destructible geometry.”
Most destructible geometry is using loads of tricks. You can do it now. Maybe they will expose PhysX’s destructible geometry though.

Overall I don’t think you quite understand what Unity is trying to do. It’s meant to be a generic solution, a light framework for anything. Building in custom editors and features only breaks the elegant component design

It is very great that Unity is going forward and “trying” to compete with the AAA+ game engines out there,but :

– Unity has no Kismet.
– Unity has no Material editor,with which you can craft beautiful materials.
– Unity had no Visual Scripting/Logic editor.
– Unity does not have an advanced PhysX editor for physics simulation.
– Unity does not have water that dynamically moves/makes waves when a character runs into it or a rigid body falls into it.
– Unity does not have particle attractors.
– Unity does not have the advanced NavMesh AI system like in AAA game engines.
– Unity does not have material instancing,for performance optimization.
– Unity does not have destructible geometry.

Unless I missed something, any idea when this will be available? Will it be in the free unity, or is it a purchase like Android and the iPhone? I’m assuming it will packaged as an extension for CS5, or CS6 — if that’s around the corner?

I just hopes that support for flash wont slowdown adding new features to Unity (they should be fully working on Flash player maybe?).
Unity still need to catch up with bigger contenders as Unreal/Cry/Vision engine.
But anyway, this is a great news.
Woot!

Right now our company is basing all of it’s decisions on market penetration. This could save some people’s jobs because we can go right into production rather than waiting for a Flash 3D game engine to be finished.

“Guys, don’t you see what’s happening here?? The name ‘Unity’ is prophetic. Unity is uniting game development for all platforms in one environment. Unity is poised to become the ultimate game dev suite. one of 2 things can happen here:

*Unity gets the final financial boost to compete effectively with the AAA guys.
*Adobe buys unity

All the same well done and continue with the good work!”

If it were the case, I would much rather Adobe buy Unity than Autodesk.

Guys, don’t you see what’s happening here?? The name ‘Unity’ is prophetic. Unity is uniting game development for all platforms in one environment. Unity is poised to become the ultimate game dev suite. one of 2 things can happen here:

*Unity gets the final financial boost to compete effectively with the AAA guys.
*Adobe buys unity

UNITY3D will make desktop 3D and mobile devices as native apps the new normal!!!!
Fantastic news for anyone who works in advertising, this will solve so many problems and make selling Unity3D to clients a snap. WAY TO GO!

@Jason Amstrad, @Nathali Abbortini, @Manon Seppen: relax, if we’re working on Unity for Molehill that does not mean people are not working on path-finding, GUI and all other things. We have a very small team working on Molehill stuff, everyone else is working on all the other Unity features. And some of them are likely to ship earlier than Unity for Flash as well.

You obviously don’t know much about software development. They’ve got a team working on that, and they’ve got a separate team working on the Flash publishing. It doesn’t take a genious to know that putting those teams together would not be productive as the team would likely be too big. Also, the publishing team is probably highly specialized in porting code…so not necessarily the best choice for writing engine code.

WOW! This is simply amazing. I had hoped that this was going to be the case when they release Moehill. We have been toying with the dreaded hellish possibility of making a Flash version of our Unity projects from the existing Flash 3D engines when the time came based on the ubiquity of Flash. No need now. Write it once in Unity! Outstanding!

WOW! thats great news. a while ago i was thinking if unity could be used instead of flash or flex, as i am looking for alternatives. but i though it will be too difficult to port it to the flash platform, but now you come out with this great surprise! looking forward to try it out! with the unity webplayer there is simply the problem with the low player penetration which is unfortunately for 90% of the clients and projects a no go.

thats great. the benefits are huge: producing everything 3d in unity and then exporting to flash, desktop, iphone. and having unity as base for all!
will it be possible to control unity-objects with as3?

It would be wise for Unity technologies to complete these things first:

– The upcoming AI pathfinding solution.
– Unity technologies should create a system for built-in LOD (Level Of Detail)creation for static meshes and also skeletal meshes.
– The new UI solution should also be completed first.

Wow! Best Unity news I’ve heard for a while, a massive distribution help. Should also save us the “molehill blues”, having feared Flash’s future 3d would drag us back into hellish unity/flash bilateral development

I’ve been a long time admirer of Unity, but so far have reverted back to Flash for just about everything, partly because of the ubiquity, but mostly because it would take *me* hours to do 2D/XML/logic stuff in Unity that I have classes already written for in ActionScript. Being able to do coding in Flash Builder, 3D in Unity sounds like a dream scenario to me.

Not only that, but the mingling of communities has to be good for creativity.

What a wonderfull news! Unity on Flash Player is the perfect solution to publish 3D on the web. I hope your research will be positive and you will reach this fabulous target!
What about WebGl export? Is it on the pipe?

Don’t think I’ve ever been this excited about tech related news. This is the best thing ever. I have been hoping for a Flash and/or WebGL exporting option for ages, and now it’s there. I love you guys so much ♥♥♥

Great move to be a dominating development platform in the near future, keep stunning us :)
And this is great news for developers who has the Flash ActionScript background.
We hope that you guys will also implement the new UI system as easy as soon as possible.
Keep rocking, many congratulations :)

I don’t think it’s a good idea for Unity to fight Adobe, some people do not understand this is a very powerful and smart move. Remember, Unity it’s just a tool to create rich 3D content fast with easy. Unity will never catch up on Flash adoption all over the globe, so the smart move to do is, use the already install user base of Adobe flash. On the other side, Adobe will never catch up on Unity tools to create 3D content.

This sounds cool. I’d like to know if it just means that normal Unity functionality will export to and play in the flash player, or whether it means there is now access to 2D and vector graphics functionality from within Unity?

i hope the end wont be like shockwave. Flash has made the web better.(except ads hate them, block them)
And Flash is faster every version but still no gpu, and after molehill ofcourse there will be tools to build 3d scenes. And i prefer to spend 2500$ to adobe cs 5 package(all package) but unity was 4500$ with needed options. i accept unity is powerfull but still player crashes.
After molehill flash and unity will be equal powers to go.
Fight will be awesome. Waiting to see.

Wow. Unity/Adobe just won the 3d-game browser war, before it’s begun. Using Unity just became the automatic choice for every web browser game developer in the world. And pure win for Adobe too, they just became the winning 3D-game browser client. Well done sirs!

It would be wise for Unity technologies to complete these things first:

– The upcoming AI pathfinding solution.
– Unity technologies should create a system for built-in LOD (Level Of Detail)creation for static meshes and also skeletal meshes.
– The new UI solution should also be completed first.

Excellent news. I love how you guys continue with your vision of “develop once, deploy everywhere”. Flash was never an enemy, and this proves once again that Unity will continue to be the engine of choice for many, MANY developers. Can’t wait to hear more!

I would love to see Unity content in Flash player. This could be ground breaking.
I fully trust engineers at Unity that they can do this. Way to go guys.
Just make sure, the flash player doesn’t throw random errors as with its own native Actionscript :P Life saver for Flash player

Zib, the number of people who have the Flash Player on their computer is exceeded by the number of people who even know what Linux IS. This is a great move on their part (and removes the one barrier people have had for developing Unity content). I’m pretty excited.

Brennon: as was already noted you should really look into Molehill as it’s going to be significantly different than today’s Flash Player. And let’s be clear, the Unity Web Player will continue to be developed and improved, it’s not going anywhere. This is simply some exciting news about another new option for you to use should it fit a given project you’re working on.

Oh my god…
investigation has gone well and you are moving into full production!!!
I do not believe this.
I am looking forward to this although I do not really see a huge
benefit apart from not having to install a player to play Unity game.
But only the future will tell…

Although there are lots of question to be answered it does not stop the
fact that you guys rock!!!!